Assault victims in the military deserve rights

Published 6:13 pm, Friday, June 7, 2013

It's been referred to as a plague on the armed forces. According to estimates, there were 26,000 sexual assaults in the U.S. military last year, a jump of some 37 percent over the year before. Victims talk about extreme pressure not to report the crimes, and predators remain free of punishment thanks to a system that is ineffective at dealing with a changing world.

Congress has vowed to put a stop to it. A hearing last week before the Senate Armed Services Committee incited outrage, but also put a human face on the problem.

Sen. Richard Blumenthal, to his credit, has been forceful and direct in pushing for change. As he has noted, of those 26,000 cases, only 3,400 were reported and 238 prosecuted successfully. In response, Blumenthal introduced legislation that would give military crime victims the same basic rights as civilian crime victims, a change that should at least start to deal with a too-often-overlooked epidemic.

He is also recommending new policies including the establishment of a victim's compensation system and bill of rights; creating of a crime victims' rights ombudsman; and requiring those convicted of sexual assault to be punitively discharged from the military.

The reforms are sensible, and the pushback has been disappointing, if not altogether surprising. Military officials, while acknowledging the problem, say they worry about detriments to unit cohesion and the top-down order necessary for military discipline. Those issues must be taken into consideration, but there is no excuse for allowing to remain a system that has so clearly failed.

Too often, the military has resisted necessary change by claiming future harm is inevitable. It's not an acceptable response.

It's a sign of progress that the issue has even come to light, rather than been hushed up as it might have been in years past. It's a sign of how far we have to go when we hear senators like Georgia's Saxby Chambliss, who implied that sexual assault is somehow an inevitable result of men and women serving together. It's not inevitable, it's a crime, and must be treated as such.

As Blumenthal said, "There's no reason military sexual assault victims should be given less respect or fewer rights than civilian sexual assault victims." He's right, and Congress must act.